July 22

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2019)
By David Wallace-Wells

This is a scary book.  If it were a movie, I'd give it an R for mature - and disturbing - content.  But it's a warning we need to hear.

We hear the stories of rising seas and flooding, but little is done by the world's governments to alleviate the causes.  And, says writer David Wallace-Wells, climate change is so much worse than what ever heard.  The melting of arctic ice, for example, has cascading effects: it is not only causing our seas to rise but could release trillions of tons of carbon, and possible, methanol (powerful greenhouse gases that can trap heat in our atmosphere), less ice means less sunlight reflected back into space rather than being absorbed by the ice ("albedo effect").

Trees absorb much of the world's carbon, but as they die through fires or clearing, they release carbon back into the atmosphere.  The author believes the world has sufficient drinking water, but governments must take action in keeping it safe and available.  Oceans have sucked up 90% of the earth's carbon, but acidic oceans are now destroying much of coral life and impairing the growth of fish and shellfish.  Polluted air can cause disease and impair breathing, a problem in many of the world's large cities like Delhi.  Viruses and bacteria in the air have caused die-outs of various species (e.g., nearly 2/3 of the world's entire saiga population [saiga are a dwarf antelope-like native to central Asia]).

Wallace-Wells looks at the 2008 economic collapse, and surmises that the swift economic growth that began in the 18th century was "not the result of innovation or the dynamics of free trade, but simply our discovery of fossil fuels and their raw power - a onetime injection of that new 'value' into a system that had previously been characterized by unending subsistence living."  (p 115)

Just as the industrial countries have benefited from the plundering of fossil fuels, they are int he best position to withstand the disruptions of climate change - almost a story of the world's rich drowning the world's poor in their waste.

How did Europe, a provincial backwater to the empires of China, India, and the Middle East, spears itself so dramatically from the rest of the world in the 19th century?  Coal (to cite Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence)

Though Wallace-Wells spends more text stating the problems than resolving them, he does note that there are new technologies to capture carbon, which are currently more affordable (he estimates ~$3Tr to capture carbon pollution) than the subsidies for fossil fuel (~$5Tr) but, in 2017, the same year the US withdrew from the Paris climate accord, it approved a $2.3 Tr tax cut for the country's richest.  He thus shows little optimism that the US, once the world leader in areas like climate control and human rights, has the interest in doing the hard work of stemming the climate change disaster.  [Let's hope and pray that a new administration will care!]

July 18

Newport Through its Architecture: A History of Styles from Postmedieval to Postmodern (2005)
By James Yarnall

Newport (founded 1939) is blessed with an abundance of architectural specimens from the colonial era, Federal period, mid-19th century, gilded age, etc.  Prof Yarnall cites dozens of examples to tell Newport's history from haven for religious refugees to thriving colonial seaport, quiet early American town, to summer resort for the wealthiest Americans.  This book is lavishly illustrated and it gave me a very good perspective on Newport's history.

July 14

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World (2019)
By Melinda Gates

"The moment of lift" is the term NASA technicians use to describe the point when a spacecraft is aloft and is flying on its own, a term Melinda Gates learned from her NASA scientist father.  She aptly applies this expression to those who've been raised up from dependance and degradation to a place where they can thrive.  In this book, part memoir and part chronicle of the Bill and Melinda Gates' Foundation, Melinda gives dozens of accounts of meeting and working with people, mostly women in developing countries, to overcome challenges like child marriage, illiteracy, and female circumcision.  She describes the benefits, for example, of working with young women to help them choose when and how many children to have - so they can have the time and resources to care for each one.

She shares her own experiences as a young woman in a family who supported education and encouraged her to strive to reach her goals.  She had teachers who provided opportunities in computer programming, leading to an undergrad degree at Duke and ultimately landing at Microsoft in its early years, where she met her husband.  She discusses her marriage, her Catholic faith which informs her work, but especially her travels to see for herself how she could use her family's fortune to most help those in need, finding that helping mothers (through education, family planning, etc) had huge benefits for helping their children thrive.

Melinda Gates' story is both tremendously informative, in seeing then needs of women through her experience, and tremendously inspiring, because she did something about it.  Should be "must reading".

July 4

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

By Erich Maria Remarque

Paul Baumer and half a dozen schoolmates have been drafted into the German army in the 4th year of the Great War.  The story opens as one of Paul's friends is dying from a leg wound.  He recalls the sadistic drill sargeant who harassed the young soldiers, taking every opportunity to make their lives miserable.  But they all suffer at the front, whether taking a bullet while running for the trenches for cover or the psychological agony of having killed a French soldier who was someone's father or son.  There are precious human moments - as when Henry visits his ailing mother during his first home leave or trying to accommodate the young wife who comes to visit her dying husband in the hospital.

The author served for only months before his shrapnel injuries rendered him too handicapped to serve.  His heartfelt narrative offers a good argument for the insanity of war.